January 6, 2009
Bowl Bull: The Myth of Notre Dame’s Preferential Treatment
Author: Mac | Filed Under College Football, News and Notes, Notre Dame Football, Opponent News, Uncategorized
As I watched Ohio State lose to Texas in the Fiesta Bowl, putting the finishing touches on the Big Ten’s current six-game BCS Bowl losing streak, I got to thinking. And when I get to thinking, that’s never a good thing.
One of the favorite semi-annual topics of conversation in the college football world is whether or not Notre Dame “deserves” its bowl bid. Oh sure, I could be a realist. I could point out to the armchair pundits that the college football post-season is little more than one game that matters plus 33 exhibition games. I could point out that this reality merits bowl organizers think about the economics of their bowl picks and thus they don’t take the Notre Dame brand lightly. I could point out that Notre Dame’s appearance in this season’s Hawaii Bowl garnered a 104% jump in television ratings and a 46% jump in attendance—the largest year-to-year increase of any 2008-09 post-season bowl and a Nielsen share and attendance figure exceeding this year’s ACC Championship game. Then again, I could just point to the Hawaii Bowl box score and ask if anyone still thinks Notre Dame didn’t deserve to be in that game.
What’s that? You’re talking about the larger bowl picture? About Notre Dame’s preferential treatment when it comes to the BCS Bowls? Okay then, I’ll bite on that conspiratorial load of crap as well.
The BCS bylaws state, and I quote,
Notre Dame will be guaranteed one of the at-large slots in a BCS bowl if it is ranked No. 8 or better in the final BCS standings.
This lone “Notre Dame clause” is usually what gets all the Irish haters’ panties in a bunch. Mark May, Michael Wilbon, Jason Whitlock, John Saunders, Jay Mariotti, any and all residents of the greater Ann Arbor area—they collude to weave this vast hypocritical tapestry that paints Notre Dame football as overrated and coddled by the BCS.
I’m not going to dispute the overrated part. I think it would be great if Notre Dame could be like Boston College or Purdue and always get invited to crappy bowls versus crappy opponents even when they’re good because nobody wants to see them play, but the reality is that any ounce of ND success on the gridiron gets bowl organizers’ mouths frothing. Notre Dame has never truly been above a Gator Bowl-quality team for the last 15 years, and yet there we we’ve been, time and again—overmatched in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl versus Oregon State, overmatched in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl versus Ohio State, and overmatched in the 2006 Sugar Bowl versus LSU.
Like I said, overrated—guilty as charged. But coddled? Give me a freaking break.
These are the facts, and they are indisputable:
FACT #1 – In the 11-season history of the BCS, 10 teams with three or more losses have played in BCS bowls.
FACT #2 – Since 1996, Notre Dame has never been extended an invitation to the Rose, Fiesta, Orange or Sugar Bowls after three or more regular season losses.
FACT #3 – In the 11-season history of the BCS, 19 teams ranked outside the Top 8—the minimum threshold ND is required to meet for any automatic BCS bid—have played in BCS bowls.
FACT #4 – Of the 19 BCS Bowl teams since 1998 ranked outside the Top 8, 13 were ranked outside the Top 10, four were ranked outside the Top 20, and two were unranked.
Simply put, one or two conference champions EVERY YEAR have not met the standard applied to Notre Dame by the BCS rules, and yet the media is strangely compliant. When an 8-4 Florida State goes to the Sugar Bowl, they say, “Sorry folks, those are the rules.” When an 8-3 Stanford loses to Texas by 62 points and to San Jose State (at home) but still manages to coast through a weak Pac Ten, they can’t see past the coach’s skin color to acknowledge his team as an undeserving paper tiger. When an 8-3 Purdue gets rewarded a Rose Bowl for essentially sucking the least in the Big Ten, they pat the conference commissioners on the back and say, “It could be worse.” And then, in the 2008-09 bowl season it is worse, as college football fans watch a half-full Orange Bowl pair two teams, Virginia Tech and Cincinnati, whose collective BCS rankings are lower than the TCU-Boise State matchup in the oh-so-storied Humanitarian Bowl.
Is it too much to ask for an ounce of journalistic integrity? How is that a 9-4 Virginia Tech is merely “playing by the rules” when they accept their bogus 2009 Orange Bowl invite, while a 10-2 Notre Dame is the subject of every conceivable are-they-deserving and ND-doesn’t-matter editorial hatchet job? Just a suggestion, but perhaps the ESPN-fueled peanut gallery needs to first get off its high horse before telling the ND faithful to get off ours.
I’m not asking you guys to like Notre Dame—that’s never going to happen. But it would be nice to see a modicum of acknowledgment that you’re as full of shit as we are. It would be nice on just one Saturday evening to turn on ESPN College Gameday and not have the urge to send my fist through Mark May’s chest cavity.
Happy New Year!
Go Irish!







Ethan Johnson has gotten a lot of playing time for a true freshman this year, but it wasn’t until Wednesday night that he really emerged. Against Hawaii last night, Johnson recorded three of Notre Dame’s eight sacks and spent most of the night in the Hawaii backfield.